New to Town -- Dr. Elizabeth Raitz Cowboy

Article posted on stlouis.bizjournals.com

By Diana Barr

Dr. Elizabeth Raitz Cowboy, 45, is the new director of the virtual ICU for Advanced ICU Care, which provides remote critical care monitoring. Cowboy most recently was medical director for Via ChristiHealth System's statewide eCare-ICU, based in Wichita, Kan.

Why medicine?
I fell in love with medicine in second grade. My father was a firefighter and a paramedic so he encouraged his daughter to go for his dream. I was one of probably the first generation of women going into medicine then. There's even fewer of us in critical care. Of 7,000 (physicians) in critical care, there might be 600 who are women.

Where did you go to med school?
I went to the Medical School of Ohio in Toledo and stayed there for my internship and residency. I went to KU Medical Center in Kansas City for my pulmonary and critical care fellowship. Most recently I completed a master's of organizational development, just last year at Friends University in Wichita.

Who's moving with you?
My husband, Ron, a respiratory therapist. He is a full-blood Native American, Navaho Indian. Everyone asks how you get a name like Cowboy - you marry an Indian. We have three children: Nicole and Cameron, two girls, who are 5 and 6, and then our son William is 20, he's at the University of California in Irvine.

In your spare time?
We dance Native American dances at pow wow. I do pottery, painting pottery.